• Do not use Works in Progress as a way of avoiding the releases system! Works in Progress can be used for sharing early betas and for getting suggestions for improvement. Releases of finished content are not allowed in this forum! If you would like to submit a finished addon, click here for instructions on how to do so.

Kart Krew™'s exe mods

It's been a while! You guys seemed to like Kart v1, so we're gonna keep going. For those not in the know, we had an very long text interview over at Sonic Retro, and in the final part we revealed a bunch of v2 spoilers with no context for people to theorize about. Get caught up with parts ONE, TWO, and THREE. We've let you guys think about it long enough, so we'll confirm some theories by going into more detail now!

BOOST STACKING

cm79rk9.gif


This might not be super noticeable from what we've shown off, but it provides the base for the rest of the changes we've made: doing multiple kinds of boosts at once no longer gets overwritten with the best one, instead they add up together! This means using Sneakers on Boost Pads is no longer a waste. The more boosts you have at once the less powerful stacking becomes, but the effect is still very notable. The number of colored afterimages behind your player serves as a tell for how many boosts you're stacking at once.

RINGS

2LqhFjw.gif


This is the big one that we wanted to get in v1 but didn't have enough time: rings!

Holding down the Item button without an item in your box will instead make you slurp down your collected rings as long as you hold the button, giving you a weak boost! Using more rings gives you a longer boost; the boost length per ring depends on your character's stats, favoring the light-acceleration corner of the graph. Ring boosting is indicated by your character doing a subtle flash, and the ring on your HUD will spin faster the longer your ring boost timer is. Rings cap out at 20, and to grab more you have to use them.

Every time you're damaged, you will drop 5 rings in addition to spinning out. Getting hit while holding a Shield item will still make you spin-out like normal, but you won't drop any rings -- you just lose the Shield. When bumping, both players will drop 1 ring each.

Getting hit or being bumped without rings will give you a Ring Sting, and you'll wipe-out for a very short time. Ring Sting's length depends on weight differences; a heavy character will get a short moment of control loss when stung by a light character, a light character stung by a heavy will get a long wipe-out. Always make sure you're holding onto at least 1 ring, as players who can be stung will have a "!" icon above their head -- if you're too greedy and waste all of your rings trying to pass players, you can be punished for it! If you have no rings and get hit, then you'll be in Ring Debt. All damage at that point will only make you lose 2 rings per hit, and you'll go in the negatives.

Being in Ring Debt will make the Super Ring item appear when you mash, giving you a healthy 10 rings -- this item can also appear for front-runners rarely. If this item gives you above 20 rings, then the extra rings are converted into boost. In Record Attack, mashing during the item roulette will always give you a Super Ring, while waiting it out will always give you a Sneaker.

SPB will also spawn a trail of rings while it's traveling, adding another way for all players to catch up to 1st while it's active. The person being chased by SPB cannot pickup any extra on-field rings (although Super Ring still works!), indicated by the SPB attacking your ring counter. Rings work as a fantastic back-up reserve for avoiding SPB in tough situations, but you can't totally rely on them since you can't get more during it!

Overall, rings have a wide range of different uses & provide tons of utility. You can use them aggressively to pass players or increase your lead, or keep them stock-piled for a boost for dodging items or recovering from damage, or use them sparringly and focus more on good item usage -- all of these are completely valid strategies.

TETHERING

rutlET6.gif


If you're behind someone in their racing line, then you'll start to tether onto them, giving you a speed boost! It kicks in immediately, indicated by the sparkling Combi-Band, but it gets stronger the longer you maintain your position behind them. The Combi-Band is red at it's distance limit, and blue up close, telling the player being tethered how close you are. Once you reach maximum tether speed, your wheels will start to kick up dust! This serves as a catch-up mechanic when you don't have items, and makes throwable items deadlier. Tethering stacks great with ring boosts, too!

Character stats influence both maximum tether distance, and the power of the speed boost you get from it. Every corner of the graph gets their own unique set of tethering advantages & disadvantages -- try experimenting with them all!

SHIELDS

The Thunder Shield is now complete -- it's the same as before, but now it draws in rings if you have less than 20.

Y5p3h3F.gif


The Bubble Shield makes you bump players away on touch, and inflates when you hold down the item button (with a cooldown between each blow-up). While inflated, it will reflect items and spinout players, requiring constant input to reflect stuff away. If you over-inflate it, it will pop off of you, becoming a trap item. Players caught in the bubble will float away until they struggle out of it!

iCQ4JWX.gif


The Flame Shield lets you tether onto other players from any distance. Holding down the item button will also make you boost more, at the cost of your steering! It is one of the most powerful speed-boosting items in the game.

OTHER

- Slopes have improved physics. They're much easier to go up, and they give you a huge speed boost while going down them. You can see this in a couple of the gifs.
- There is a (more consistent) speed cap in the air, so large jumps are not affected by the higher overall speed of the game. It has easing applied to it too, so the speed loss is subtle & natural feeling.
- OpenGL's 3D models have been getting a new coat of paint -- hue-shifted player colors are represented more accurately, and the models are getting a bit more detail.
- We've teased this in lots of these gifs -- lives will be a feature for the Single Player mode, preventing you from proceeding with a cup if you didn't place in the top-half. You have to legitimately learn the course layouts if you want to continue! We may go into more detail about Grand Prix later, when it is more complete.
- There's other new items in the planning stages as well, stay tuned!

Lastly, here's a video showing off these new features in a real race:


Overall, all of these changes will make Kart much more competitive, faster, and even more aggressive than defensive. Rings give lightweights get a bit more of a technical edge, without removing the power heavyweights hold over controlling space at all. Rings & drafting gives every player more chances to stay in the fight, meaning that maintaining a lead won't be about getting a head-start & playing it safe anymore. Hard mode will be more of a niche and Normal will be the recommended game speed (as originally intended).

We hope that you will all enjoy the changes when the update rolls out. It'll likely take a long time, but hopefully this serves as a small taste for what's next.
 
Last edited:
These changes are awesome, Can't wait how these feel in the update.

Heres hoping battle gets some love too.
 
Battle already has a bit more love, but it needs some more visual polish before we show it off.
 
I love the amount of progress that's being shown, in such a short timespan too (compared to 2.2 :v)!


The rings mechanic looks like it'll be a great risk vs. reward system that'll not only add a bit more strategy to the high-octane racing, but also make the game play more distinct and original (compared to the other kart racers we have going on today).

Just a question, will KART R2 feature 2.2s palette?
 
Yes. We have already converted our graphics to use the 2.2 palette, so you're looking at it in the gifs and video above.
 
Neat looking update! I've always wanted hue-shifting support for MD2/3's, and the ring mechanic looks awesome. Great job, you guys!
 
Love what's going on here! So glad rings aren't useless ala MK8/MK8D as well. The new items look interesting as well! Can't wait to see what else is in store for us next.(Hope Battle has a lot of new stuff too... maybe including new gamemodes? :P)
 
Official Models Update Info

As Sal mentioned above, she has gone above and beyond coding a way for SRB2Kart to allow 3D models to hue-shift just like sprites. Thanks to this, we were inspired to re-create the model used for the actual kart almost from scratch with VelocitOni's guidance and texture assistance, we came up with this.
jGpASHz.gif
While tons more accurate the in-game sprite, the new model also takes a few liberties to better represent the intended design.
Since this requires each character model to essentially be re-imported, I've taken this chance to also touch up characters as I import.
xKnuqO9.png
We have also been hard at work improving some OpenGL quirks, such a shading and level lighting.
GyKshMS.png
And finally, here's an example of hue-shifting with one of my newer favorite colors, wristwatch.
HYxW7qK.png

I will try to record some gameplay footage soon for you guys and will post here.

-Disclaimer: The use of 3D models is an OpenGL exclusive option
 
These look really nice. Im glad OpenGL is getting touch ups. I might change to OGL more because of it.
 
Wow. Those look much better than I pictured it (even if I pictured it exactly like that). Seriously, great job you guys, you're gonna get very far with this.


I'm curious as to how you made it work, though.
 
Today, our Twitter and YouTube accounts reached 1,000 followers. Here's a celebratory gif.


RPe0vnH.gif
 
1 Year of SRB2Kart... We posted this video last night to everywhere but here, so y'all who use the MB can have this preview too.



The amount of support and how massive the game's gotten's blown us out of the water, thanks for playing version 1 this long and still this strong??
 
1 Year of SRB2Kart... We posted this video last night to everywhere but here, so y'all who use the MB can have this preview too. https://youtu.be/GxMt6XdrxVU
I'm not a fan of the menu background. One, the art style doesn't fit so well in my opinion, being a(n intentionally-washed-out) pre-rendered 3D Sonic without outlines/darkened edges around him.
And two, it's too bright to make other elements really "pop out" compared to the background, which I find especially noticeable with the character selection screen's character icons. They "pop" a little, but not much, only being slightly brighter than the white parts of the background.

I'd also rather have "Player 1-4" than "A-D Player", but that's just me being used to other games saying "Player 1-4".


Edit: But other than that, it looks good to me. Not being much of a fan of online multiplayer games, SRB2 Kart had been pretty lacking in singleplayer content for my taste, and seeing what appears to be bots here, even while probably not as advanced as in Mario Kart games or such, makes me look very forward to this version of SRB2 Kart.
 
Last edited:
MB threads like this are quite dead these days, the Kart Krew discord is at 10,054 members and it's hard to remember that an actually formatted website is probably the better way to give info over fast moving channels.

Here's the Marble Garden Zone showcase
 
seeing the artstyle change makes me happy and worried


I'm worried that the work I've made won't be able to mimic the new style.


of course i won't know until a few years maybe.
 
What's funny about Tikal in there to me is that she's a recent custom character as of this writing and I remember the judge's post saying something like "must've been hard for you to find good voice lines for her!" ...Not like that's false, I'd agree that fitting lines for Kart could've been a struggle, considering what kind of dialogue she has in Adventure. Works fairly well anyhow, examining the video a few dozen times! Everything is looking and sounding amazing as usual
 
If you've been following the Kart Krew Discord, you might've heard about SRB2Kart going slow due to the huge merge with 2.2's codebase. Notably replays are currently broken, so it's a lot harder to get videos. While progress has been slow though, it's been good, and has been pickin up very recently. We wanted to do something really special for the anniversary, but we can't really do much, so instead we're simply going to make a huge dump of lots of mechanic changes we have implemented.

= General changes =

Fcqe3gq.png


Let's start with a new item. Meet the Proximity Mine's cousin: the Land Mine! This is a 1st-exclusive trap item that works similarly to a Banana, except it uses a new damage type: tumble! Tumble makes you bounce off the ground a few times before letting you drive again. It is currently only applied to "ramming" attacks like Invincibility, Grow, and Flame Shield, as it is the most threatening damage type in the game, but Land Mine is the only exception to that rule so far.

DOAtlQv.gif


Land Mine's biggest weakness is that it pops directly up out of you when used, rather than being placed behind you or thrown forwards. That means it's very difficult to use for direct offense, you'll be more likely to hit someone with it by hiding it in devilish spots. Since Land Mines are fairly rare, you have to try and make the most of it whenever you get one.

The Land Mine is one of our ideas to make 1st place a little more interesting to be in.

--------

gr7xjLB.gif


Inspired by Kirby Air Ride (and fighting games in general), all damage now causes hitlag. The gif should speak for itself, the slight pause before the damage taking place makes each hit feel extremely powerful!

y0Tfx9l.gif


Hitlag also gets stronger with more ridiculous hits :)

--------

enJgnr1.gif


Currently in v1, holding Accelerate + Brake makes you move forward slowly. For v2, we've changed this button combo to preform the E-Brake: once you come to a complete stop, you'll clench in place. By doing this, you can even park on the steepest of slopes!

While you're E-Braking, you can hold the Drift button to spindash! If you ever get stuck on a steep slope, you can preform a spindash to get yourself up it. Hold it for too long though and you'll spinout. Spindashing can't be used while flashing though, so you can't use it to cheese acceleration after getting hurt.

The spindash was designed to pair with the next mechanic...

= Race Changes =

GM4VvTR.gif


Race hasn't recieved many changes except for what was mentioned above, we're very happy with how it plays generally. However, one thing we definitely don't like are the start boosts. To us we thought they were very static and wanted them to play out more differently per round.

Instead, meet POSITION!! During the starting countdown, you're entirely free to roam the map. If you try to cross the finish line before GO though, you'll get faulted, and have to watch everyone else cross the line. The amount of position time increases with the number of players playing, so small servers won't waste any time, but there'll be room for lots of shenanigans in huge servers.

The first person to cross the finish line after GO gets a rainbow boost. We've nicknamed this First Blood. This leads to many "chicken" scenarios, as everyone fights to be first across the line without being too early!

Tons of stuff can happen during position time that make it more engaging to us than the old start boost format. You can use the spindash or your rings as a pseudo start boost. You can play it passive and get out of the way of others. You can explore the map for things like extra rings, horizontal springs, or boosters behind the finish line. Or you can be that jerk who pushes other players around into the beam. There are no rules during the countdown anymore!

= Grand Prix Mode =

Ly2Fu9k.gif


Bots have been added for the upcoming Grand Prix mode. They also work perfectly online; they'll fill up the server if enabled. You can set a difficulty between 1 and 9. They're very easy at Level 1, but they challenge even us regularly at Level 9!

The rival is the bot in the GP that's most likely to win. They'll be the most aggressive bot of the bunch and will do anything to win, so be sure to focus your sights on them! If they consistently place high, then they'll get more and more aggressive. But if you make them finish in a low placement, they might retire!

To continue, you must win each race by placing within the top half. Place any lower, and you'll lose a life, and need to redo the race. You'll get an extra life for every 20 rings that you bring across the finish line, totaled between each map. From even just a little bit of testing so far with some players who aren't super familiar with kart racers, the lives system has helped them get more familiar with the track designs and get more quickly used to our game's physics and quirks.

Grand Prix is currently fully playable, but we have extra ideas for the mode to set it apart from other racers that aren't implemented yet.

= Battle Changes =

We have done a massive overhaul to Battle Mode. While we liked playing Battle in v1 development, we eventually ended up echoing what most of the community thought of the mode: it was too slow & methodical compared to the fast & exciting nature of Race, it was very easy to camp/stall the round (especially without a round timer), and being knocked out wasn't very fun. We didn't really like any of the simple fixes to these, so we went and rethought each aspect of the mode.

To quickly go over all of the changes:

covO3WZ.gif

Movement at 0 spheres...

tAxjIl3.gif

...schmovement at 40 spheres!

  • Blue Spheres act as Battle Mode's rings! Keep grabbing Blue Spheres to increase your acceleration and top speed. The meter caps out at 40 spheres. The acceleration bonuses drastically encourage more risky attacking. Your collected spheres decay over time, so you need to move around the map frequently to keep them!

iHI4ZVb.png


  • Instead of item boxes, Battle spawns paper item drops from the sky. Instead of making detours for boxes, waiting out the roulette, and then making a decision if you even want to keep the roll... you just see if there's a item drop in the distance and grab it! This vastly improves the pace of the game.

F0eMkcz.gif


  • You now take bumpers every time you damage someone. This also is meant to encourage more aggressive play by rewarding you with more health by causing damage!

iL7jUHx.gif


  • While you can still win the game by being the last survivor, an alternative win condition was added: Chaos Emeralds! Get all 7 to instantly win the round.

O2RdMUi.gif


  • The Karma Comeback system is way buffed.
    • We removed the redundant item sharing modes, and kept it to the Bomb mode.
    • The Bombs no longer control any differently, no more slipperiness.
    • Instead of getting to hit 2 people for just 1 Bumper, you swap ALL Bumpers with them. This helps the pace of the game by never re-adding players (only swapping out who's playing), and makes coming back after getting knocked out of the game not feel hopeless.

4aSQmEL.gif


  • We've made time limit the default, but instead of ending the round instantly, it activates overtime. During Overtime, a barrier closes into the middle of the arena, which eliminates both players and Karma bombs permanently if they touch it! This enforces no stalling can happen, but in a more natural way than how the optional time limit in v1 works.

hZrox8k.png


  • If that wasn't enough, we're adding an extra mode using the Battle maps: Break the Capsules! Destroy all of the Capsules placed in the map as fast as possible. This is intended to add a method to progress maps during Battle Free Play, so that a server is less likely to be stuck on Battle forever. It's also added as a new Time Attack mode, so you can also record your bests times!

= New Maps =

If that's not enough for you, then here's some screenshots of many new maps to close out the post.

Y50YyYt.png

Darkvile Castle Zone, Act 1

xD13vCf.png

Quartz Quadrant Zone

j755bsi.png

Thunder Top Zone

9AfvMnn.png

Lavender Shrine Zone


DqrWspA.png

Also, Jeck has done a great job with updating his models further!


We haven't even revealed everything so far! I am personally very excited for SRB2Kart's future and cannot wait to get the update out to y'all. Hopefully you can excuse the long release time (if you can't, you clearly haven't been around SRB2 much :Y), but we want to make the v2 update as big and cool as possible.
 
Last edited:
I'm at a loss for words.

This already looks like a finished product, but you guys are going even further beyond?! There's so much love in here, and I'm absolutely thrilled to see what you guys have next in store to make this easily the best racing game out there in existence.
 
The updates to Battle mode will definitely get me excited for updating all my Twisted Metal levels to the new version, love the new changes to it.
Cannot wait for the new version.
The fact that its not everything makes me wonder what everything will have by the end of the development cycle
 

Who is viewing this thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Back
Top